This module is an authentication handler that uses the basic mechanism provided by Apache::AuthCookie with a DBI database for ticket-based protection. It is based on two tokens being provided, a username and password, which can be any strings (there are no illegal characters for either). The username is used to set the remote user as if Basic Authentication was used.

On an attempt to access a protected location without a valid cookie being provided, the module prints an HTML login form (produced by a CGI or any other handler; this can be a static file if you want to always send people to the same entry page when they log in). This login form has fields for username and password. On submitting it, the username and password are looked up in the DBI database. The supplied password is checked against the password in the database; the password in the database can be plaintext, or a crypt() or md5_hex() checksum of the password. If this succeeds, the user is issued a ticket. This ticket contains the username, an issue time, an expire time, and an MD5 checksum of those and a secret key for the server. It can optionally be encrypted before returning it to the client in the cookie; encryption is only useful for preventing the client from seeing the expire time. If you wish to protect passwords in transport, use an SSL-encrypted connection. The ticket is given in a cookie that the browser stores.

After a login the user is redirected to the location they originally wished to view (or to a fixed page if the login "script" was really a static file).

On this access and any subsequent attempt to access a protected document, the browser returns the ticket to the server. The server unencrypts it if encrypted tickets are enabled, then extracts the username, issue time, expire time and checksum. A new checksum is calculated of the username, issue time, expire time and the secret key again; if it agrees with the checksum that the client supplied, we know that the data has not been tampered with. We next check that the expire time has not passed. If not, the ticket is still good, so we set the username.

Authorization checks then check that any "require valid-user" or "require user jacob" settings are passed. Finally, if a "require group foo" directive was given, the module will look up the username in a groups database and check that the user is a member of one of the groups listed. If all these checks pass, the document requested is displayed.

If a ticket has expired or is otherwise invalid it is cleared in the browser and the login form is shown again.

All configuration directives for this module are passed in PerlSetVars. These PerlSetVars must begin with the AuthName that you are describing, so if your AuthName is PrivateBankingSystem they will look like:

PerlSetVar PrivateBankingSystemDBI_DSN "DBI:mysql:database=banking"

See also Apache::Authcookie for the directives required for any kind of Apache::AuthCookie-based authentication system.

In the following descriptions, replace "WhatEver" with your particular AuthName. The available configuration directives are as follows:

Specifies the secret key for this auth scheme. This should be a long random string. This should be secret; either make the httpd.conf file only readable by root, or put the PerlSetVar in a file only readable by root and include it.

The file that contains the secret key (on the first line of the file). This is required and has no default value. This key should be owned and only readable by root. It is read at server startup time. The key should be long and fairly random. If you want, you can change it and restart the server, (maybe daily), which will invalidate all prior-issued tickets.

This directive MUST be set before the PerlModule line that loads this module, because the secret key file is read immediately (at server start time). This is so you can have it owned and only readable by root even though Apache then changes to another user.

What kind of encryption to use to prevent the user from looking at the fields in the ticket we give them. This is almost completely useless, so don't switch it on unless you really know you need it. It does not provide any protection of the password in transport; use SSL for that. It can be 'none', 'des', 'idea', 'blowfish', or 'blowfish_pp'.

How long tickets are good for after being issued. Note that presently Apache::AuthCookie does not set a client-side expire time, which means that most clients will only keep the cookie until the user quits the browser. However, if you wish to force people to log in again sooner than that, set this value. This can be 'forever' or a life time specified as:

For this module to work, the database tables must be laid out at least somewhat according to the following rules: the user field must be a primary key so there is only one row per user; the password field must be NOT NULL. If you're using MD5 passwords the password field must be 32 characters long to allow enough space for the output of md5_hex(). If you're using crypt() passwords you need to allow 13 characters.

For the groups table, the access table is actually going to be a join table between the users table and a table in which there is one row per group if you have more per-group data to store; if all you care about is group membership though, you only need this one table. The only constraints on this table are that the user and group fields be NOT NULL.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA